


In the Manner of Elves

by Jezunya



Category: The Hobbit (Jackson Movies)
Genre: An Unexpected Anniversary, An Unexpected Anniversary 2016, Bilbo POV, Established Relationship, Fantasy Racism, Fluff, Fluff and Humor, Fun with languages, Humor, M/M, Married Couple, Modern Middle Earth, Multilingual Characters, Romance, Schmoop, So much schmoop, elves are rude and mean, it is known
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-26
Updated: 2016-04-26
Packaged: 2018-06-04 14:02:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,267
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6661447
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jezunya/pseuds/Jezunya
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For their anniversary, Bilbo and Thorin go out to dinner at a fancy elven restaurant that Bilbo has always wanted to eat at. </p><p>It goes about as well as anyone familiar with elves and dwarves might expect.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In the Manner of Elves

**Author's Note:**

> Betaed, as always, by the wonderful [glasscannon](archiveofourown.org/users/glasscannon/)
> 
> (Apologies to elf fans everywhere.)

Bilbo is nearly vibrating with anticipation by the time they get to the restaurant, bouncing up and down on his toes and clutching Thorin’s hand in both of his as they approach the greeter’s podium. His husband shoots him a small, amused smile before looking up, up, up at the elf who peers down at them. 

“Reservation for two, under Baggins,” Thorin says, holding up two thick fingers. The elf glances silently down at the thick, gold-leafed book before her, pale green eyes narrowing for a moment as she scans the list of reservations. Nodding to the raven-skinned waitress who steps up beside the podium and produces two leather-bound menus seemingly from nowhere, the hostess makes a small mark in the book with the quill in her slender hand – and not one of those novelty knock-offs with a feather glued onto a cheap biro, but a _real quill_ with a _real crystal inkwell!_ Bilbo almost can’t contain his squeak of excitement as the second elf beckons them onward, the sheer atmosphere of the place very nearly overwhelming him: the golden book and feather quill, the swirling carven patterns in the podium’s solid wood, and the delicate, spiraling architecture of the dining room beyond, the way the twisting vines and tree motifs along the walls and ceiling seem to catch and cradle the soft candlelight illuminating the interior of the restaurant.

It’s everything Bilbo ever dreamed it might be.

“Right this way, sirs,” the waitress says, in the cool, accented Westron that speaks of a hometown somewhere in northern Hildórien, if Bilbo’s linguistics background hasn’t entirely deserted him. Bilbo shoots her an excited grin, honestly wishing to convey to all the staff just how pleased he is to be here, how much he adores everything they and this establishment stand for, a true pinnacle of fine dining – but the waitress has turned away already to lead them deeper into the restaurant, and does not seem to have noticed him trying to catch her eye.

Thorin chuckles quietly beside him and, briefly, lifts their joined hands to press a kiss to the back of Bilbo’s palm. Bilbo jostles his shoulder into Thorin’s as they follow the hostess into the dining hall, grinning now at this utter sop of a dwarf he’s married to.

Their elven guide leads them to a proper hobbit-sized table near the center of the cavernous room. “Your waiter will be with you shortly,” she tells them, handing over the menus as they take their seats on either side of the table, and then turns away to resume her post at the front of the restaurant, once again without seeming to notice Bilbo’s smile or his quiet thanks.

Bilbo has to allow himself a moment to take in their surroundings as he settles into his seat, his mouth admittedly hanging open a little as he gazes up at the soaring architecture. The room is lined with towering wooden pillars, as irregular in shape as the oldest trees in a forest, roots disappearing beneath the glossy floorboards and branches intertwining above to create a glimmering canopy of gold and red, evocative of the elves’ ancient forest homelands in autumn and perfectly accentuating the gentle candlelight of the restaurant below.

He looks down again to find his husband watching him with a soft, contemplative expression on his face.

“Thorin,” Bilbo starts, and has to stop to clear the sudden lump in his throat. “Really, thank you so much for doing this,” he says softly, reaching across the table toward the dwarf. “I know you’ve no love for elven things, and I’m sure you would have much rather spent our anniversary at a dwarven restaurant.”

“Or barricaded inside our flat, actually,” Thorin rumbles with a small, private smile, closing the distance halfway across the table to lay his large hand over Bilbo’s. He shakes his head then, continuing, “You get plenty of dwarven cooking at home as it is, and I know how long you’ve wanted to come here.” Thorin’s fingers curl under Bilbo’s palm and he lifts the hobbit’s small hand to his lips once more. “Anything for you, amrâlimê,” he murmurs and presses a bristly kiss to the soft skin there.

“Soppy old dwarf,” Bilbo beams across at him, and gets a smoldering look and another kiss, this time to his palm, in return. Bilbo chuckles and finally pulls his hand away, shaking his head as he looks down at his menu. “You’re going to get us thrown out for PDA,” he scolds, but he can’t help his smile at Thorin’s answering snort and his low mutter about ‘prissy elvish sensibilities.’

He holds the menu by its very edges, admiring the beautiful imagery emblazoned in gold across the front of the dark leather: a noble, haughty looking elf sitting upon a throne of twisted vines and branches, crowned with thorns and berries. The image somehow gives the impression of looking down its nose at Bilbo, despite being rendered in two dimensions. Quite suitable for a restaurant called _The Realm of the Elvenking_.

He allows himself a few more moments to savor the supple material of the cover beneath his fingers, glancing up once to offer a grateful smile to the waitress who silently places crystal water goblets before them – a smile that, again, isn’t returned in any measure. Thorin’s gaze follows the elf woman as she moves away again, a small frown marring his husband’s bearded face, and Bilbo catches his eye when he looks back, shrugging and shaking his head at the dwarf. The staff clearly take their jobs very seriously, especially at an establishment like this, and waiters being seen and not heard is apparently one of their tenets. He puts it from his mind and gently prises the menu open to its first page.

And freezes.

“Thorin,” Bilbo says, staring down at the menu with a sense of slowly mounting horror. He scans line after line with no luck. “Thorin, the _menu_.”

Thorin looks down, setting down his water goblet and flipping his menu open. “It’s in elvish,” he deadpans, glancing across as Bilbo again.

Frantically, Bilbo turns to the second page, then the third. Still nothing he can make out. “It’s in _Quenya_!” he hisses, and looks over at his husband in distress. “I don’t read Quenya!”

Thorin frowns, looking down to scan over the page in front of him again. “Isn’t it essentially the same as Sindarin?”

Bilbo shakes his head, some distant part of him wincing guiltily at how tightly his fingers are gripping the edges of the pristine pages now. “Same alphabet, entirely different language. Oh, dear…” He glances around, looking for a passing waiter, and finally manages to flag one down after several moments of increasingly flamboyant arm waving.

“Mara sinyë, sirs,” the ebon-haired elf murmurs as he draws even with their table. “I’m the head waiter on duty tonight. Is everything to your liking?”

“Erm, actually, is there, that is, could we possibly see a menu in Westron?” Bilbo asks, smiling beseechingly up at the tall figure.

The waiter blinks a few times, one side of his nose pulling up ever so slightly – nothing that could _actually_ be called a sneer, but Bilbo still gets the impression— Oh, Valar, Thorin really is rubbing off on him. “I’m afraid we don’t carry anything in the common tongue, sir,” the elf says, and, no, actually, that was _definitely_ a sneer on the word ‘common.’

“Er, Sindarin then? Please?” Bilbo tries again, still achingly polite. Across from him, Thorin’s frown has returned full force and is now beginning to edge into scowl territory.

The elf looks down his nose at them for a beat and then lets out a breath. “I’ll see what I can do, sir,” he says – _sighs_ , really – and then reaches down to pluck the Quenyan menus from their hands before sweeping away in a flourish of glossy dark hair.

“Thank you,” Bilbo calls after him, not that the waiter gives any sign of acknowledgement. He sighs and turns to face Thorin again, who is watching him with his Unimpressed Face, the one he usually reserves for his nephews’ shenanigans or particularly dunderheaded board members. It’s not actually _Bilbo_ he’s unimpressed with, at least, but it still puts a bit of a damper on the hobbit’s good mood. He swallows and, looking around at the vaulted ceiling again, says brightly as he can, “It is so beautiful in here!”

“Charming,” Thorin replies dryly, but he reaches his hand across the table again, palm up, waiting until Bilbo places his own hand over it. Thick fingers close around his with a warm, comforting weight, Thorin’s thumb stroking gentle circles against his wrist.

“We probably should have called ahead about the menus,” he says, reaching with his other hand to take a sip from his water glass. “Or made a note on the reservation online, I suppose. Really, there was no way for them to know.”

“Considering their website is in Westron, I can’t help thinking there was no way for _us_ to know,” Thorin responds, his fingers tightening momentarily around Bilbo’s, a reassuring pressure that the hobbit gratefully returns.

“Maybe,” is Bilbo’s noncommittal reply, slumping a little as he looks down at the table again.

“You were right about one thing, though,” Thorin says after a few moments of silence, “the view in here truly is breathtaking.”

Bilbo smiles a little and glances up, fully prepared to distract himself again by admiring the restaurant’s lush golden décor and atmosphere, and instead finds Thorin gazing at him rather than at the architecture. The expression on his dwarf’s face as he watches him is so soft, so very tender and full of love, that Bilbo can’t help but duck his head again, smiling broadly now and actually feeling himself blush. “You. Are. Ridiculous,” he says, shaking his head and looking up again, and it’s his turn this time to pull their joined hands towards himself and press a kiss to Thorin’s knuckles.

It’s amazing, really, Bilbo thinks, his lips lingering for a moment against his husband’s skin, how deftly Thorin can lighten his mood with just a few well-placed words, just the touch of his hand. Even more amazing is how he, a crotchety old loner long before his time, more interested in his books than other people even back in uni, could have possibly ended up sharing his life with such a kind, dedicated, simply _good_ person as Thorin. It is beyond Bilbo’s comprehension sometimes, especially given the rocky start to their friendship all those years ago – paired up together in more than a few language classes, Bilbo with his linguistics focus and Thorin with his ignoble, as Bilbo had deemed it at the time, desire to dominate the business world with his family’s international empire.

Thorin turns his hand over, gently cupping the side of Bilbo’s face, and he sighs contentedly, resting his cheek against the dwarf’s broad palm. Beyond his comprehension, perhaps, more than he deserves, certainly, but also something he will never stop being grateful for.

“ _You truly are the most beautiful being in this light, my love,_ ” Thorin whispers in Khuzdul, leaning in a little so Bilbo can hear him over the quiet hubbub of their fellow diners. “ _Like you’ve been wrought from gold and amber._ ”

“ _I still prefer starlight,_ ” Bilbo whispers back in the dwarven tongue, nuzzling at Thorin’s palm and looking over at his husband with hooded eyes, his own smile widening as the dwarf drops his gaze, looking bashful and quietly pleased.

Thorin looks wonderful now, of course, in his sharp dark suit with the top two buttons of his shirt left open, the warm light bronzing his skin and bringing out the faint red tones in his dark hair, even swept back into a neat ponytail as it currently is. Of course, Thorin _always_ looks amazing to Bilbo’s eyes – traditional dwarven beauty standards be damned – but there is simply nothing comparable to the sight of his husband under a clear night sky, the silver light of the stars gilding his hair and skin like the most precious of metals, like something kingly and ancient. He’s reminded in those moments of the old mythology, the tales still regarded as sacred history in some circles, of how the dwarves were hewn from living stone and crowned with stars, how their bones were made of solid mithril and their veins ran with quicksilver…

More presently, it reminds Bilbo of nighttime skinny dipping on their honeymoon years ago.

The pale elf woman who had dropped off their water earlier reappears then, hands clasped low before her and expression coolly detached as she draws to a stop beside their table. Bilbo drops Thorin’s hand, hastily pulling his thoughts out of the gutter and back into the present. “I can take your drink orders now,” the waitress announces in a clear, ringing voice, “as well as any _avestar_ with which you would like to whet your appetites.”

“Oh, er,” Bilbo starts, stumbling over his words.

“We haven’t been able to see the menu just yet,” Thorin cuts in smoothly. The elf turns her head to silently regard him, and Bilbo realizes with a start that the way the waitress is standing orients her almost entirely towards the hobbit, not quite turning her back on Thorin, but certainly offering him a bit of a cold shoulder.

“The set we were given originally were in Quenya, you see,” Bilbo says quickly, drawing the elf’s gaze back to him. “The, erm, head waiter came by and said he would bring us a pair in Sindarin, and we’re still waiting on those, so we’re actually not quite ready to order just yet.”

The waitress blinks down at him once, slowly. “I see. We don’t normally cater to those unfamiliar with our culture, I’m afraid,” she says, and the look she slants at Thorin then doesn’t so much as ripple the still waters of her expression, yet, somehow, her contempt seems plain as day – as though _Thorin_ were the cause of _any_ of this trouble! “I’ll just go see how those are coming along, then,” the elf tells Bilbo – _just_ Bilbo, as if his husband isn’t even there, as if he isn’t worth her attention beyond a cold sneer!

“We’ll have half the restaurant searching for those menus before much longer,” Thorin murmurs as the waitress strides away again, offering Bilbo a small half-grin from across the table.

Bilbo doesn’t respond, still staring after the waitress’s departing form. He doesn’t think he _can_ speak at the moment, truly, not after that display.

It does pain him to see Thorin’s smile fall at his silence, forced though it may have been. Bilbo was the one who made them come here in the first place, and his husband has been such a good sport about it the entire time, only to be met with, with—

“Bilbo,” Thorin says, reaching to take the hobbit’s hand once more, his voice dropping low and quiet with concern. “Gabshunê, we don’t have to eat here, you know. The cancelation fee isn’t an issue.  If you want to leave—”

“You know, this is why dwarves are so much better than elves!” Bilbo hisses suddenly, his voice no less heated for its low volume as his fingers clench tight around Thorin’s. “You lot have your secret language because it’s sacred and important and only to be shared with those closest to you, whereas these _elves_ want to wave their stupid language in our faces just for the sake of belittling those who don’t speak it!”

Thorin watches him silently for a long moment after Bilbo finishes, his broad thumb tracing soothing designs against the hobbit’s skin, sweeping rough and warm over Bilbo’s knuckles as he attempts to calm his breathing once more. “Much as it warms my heart to hear you express your preference for dwarves over elves,” he rumbles at last, and offers a small smirk and a squeeze to Bilbo’s hand when the hobbit’s face flushes for his outburst, “you _have_ wanted to eat here for years. I hate to see you so disappointed by something you’ve looked forward to for so long.”

“I know,” Bilbo sighs, deflating. “And I still want to. The food is supposed to be _exquisite_. It’s just the waitstaff are so… so…”

“Elven?”

He kicks half-heartedly at Thorin’s shin under the table, trying for a glare but unable to completely smother his grin. “I was going to say _superior_. Or pretentious.”

“As I said.”

“Hush, you,” Bilbo admonishes, smiling fully now, and he lets Thorin weave their fingers together.

It’s a few minutes more before the head waiter returns, two fresh menus clasped in his hands, though he makes no move to hand them over when he draws even with their little table, even when Bilbo extends a hand to accept his. “I must say,” the elf drawls, doing a fair impression of the restaurant’s iconic mascot with the way he’s staring down his nose at them now, “we are unaccustomed to being _hurried along_ in this establishment. At least not by… _polite_ guests.”

Bilbo can only blink up at him, aghast. Across from him, Thorin is beginning to look downright stormy as he frowns up at the elf in confusion. “We… We didn’t…?” Bilbo stammers.

“I apologize if the _wait_ for your menus was such that you felt the need to enlist additional members of our staff in their retrieval,” the waiter goes on, and finally releases the menus from his grasp, handing them down to Bilbo and then Thorin, one at a time.

“Oh, we, we didn’t mean to,” Bilbo tries again. “It was just that when she came by for our drink orders—”

The look the elf gives him then is pure, icy disdain, making the words wither and die in Bilbo’s throat. “In any case,” the waiter sniffs a moment later, looking away from Bilbo at last, “I’ll be happy to take your orders. Whenever you’re ready, of course.” He folds his hands in front of himself and then just… stands there. Waiting.

“Oh, I, um—” Bilbo swallows thickly, feeling his face burn with embarrassment as he looks down at his menu. He can feel Thorin’s gaze on him from across the table, heavy and fuming, no doubt more than ready to snap back at this rude elf and only keeping himself in check for Bilbo’s sake.

Not that his restraint particularly helps, at this point. The head waiter is going to personally take their orders now. They’re being given the _management treatment_. They’ve been branded _problem customers_. An experience he’s been looking forward to for such a long time, and it might very well be ruined now, and all because of a simple mishap of language. All he can hope for now is that they get through the rest of their meal without being actually thrown out of the restaurant.

The words swim in front of Bilbo’s eyes, familiar letters reduced to gibberish. He has of course reviewed the restaurant’s menu numerous times online, salivating over decadent descriptions and glistening photographs, but most often he was left with the conclusion that he simply wanted to try _everything_. Now, trying to pick one thing, _anything_ , to order first seems like a nigh impossible task, especially with the elf waiter all but breathing down his neck, his mind utterly blank and his eyes refusing to make sense of the words before him.

“I know what I want, if you need a moment, barzunê,” Thorin says, and Bilbo jerks his gaze over to his husband, relieved.

His relief only lasts a moment, though, as he finds Thorin giving him That Look. The one that says, ‘I have a plan, follow my lead, these assholes won’t know what hit them.’ The look that has gotten Bilbo and Thorin banned by their relatives from participating in pictionary, charades, and any other partnered games. _That_ Look.

Bilbo normally relishes That Look, more often than not answers in kind with a saucy grin and a Look of his own. Now, he’s left wondering exactly how long it will be before they’re banned from this restaurant as well because of whatever Thorin is about to do, and also if the waiter might at least let him take some food home in a to-go box before throwing them out.

“Whenever you’re ready, sir,” the elf sighs, sounding rather put upon.

Thorin holds Bilbo’s gaze for only a moment, then glances once more at his menu and then up at the waiter. “Yes, I’ll have _your orc-fucking mother’s head on a platter_.”

Bilbo feels all the color drain from his face as he gapes in horror at his husband. This is it, they’re done, the waiter will call security and they’ll be unceremoniously booted out onto the street and, and, and really, some of Thorin’s plans are sometimes worse than others, but _this_ , this really takes the cake, this—

It takes him two full, terrified seconds to realize that Thorin had switched into Khuzdul midway through his sentence.

A timid glance up at the waiter shows a mildly confused but otherwise unruffled expression on the elf’s face. Bilbo’s eyes still dart around the rest of the room, though, waiting for the offended gasps to sound around them and for security to come barreling towards them to eject them from the building.

Except… Except no one is reacting. At all. Nearly all of the other patrons he can see in the wide dining room are elven of some stripe or other, along with a smattering of humans and, across the room, one small table hosting a group of well-to-do-looking hobbits.

There is not a single dwarf, besides Thorin, anywhere in sight in the entire place. No one, aside from the two of them, with any reason to have ever learned the ancient dwarven language.

“I’m sorry, sir,” their waiter says after a beat of silence, though from his tone it rather sounds like he thinks _they_ ought to be the ones apologizing, “I’m afraid I didn’t quite catch that.”

Thorin smiles blandly up at him, and Bilbo _knows_ what he’s doing, just knows this is going to end terribly, but Thorin speaks again before the hobbit can even open his mouth to shush him. “I said I want _to burn down your ancestral home and shit on the ashes._ ”

The laugh that bubbles up his throat then takes Bilbo quite by surprise, and he hastens to cover it with a bit of faked coughing, thumping at his chest and reaching for his water glass to complete the act. Thorin, bless him, doesn’t react a whit.

The elf frowns down at them, violet eyes switching between the two of them before settling on Thorin once more. “That doesn’t sound like anything from our menu, _sir_.”

Thorin raises his brows and widens his eyes, doing a fair impression of Bilbo’s young nephew as he blinks utterly innocent baby blues up at the waiter. Bilbo sips a bit more frantically at his water, staring down at his own menu again. “Really? But it says right here,” Thorin plants a thick finger on an entry midway down the crisp, no doubt highly expensive parchment paper, “ _that_ _you and all your household smell of old cheese and goat semen._ ”

The water very nearly comes out of Bilbo’s nose at that one.

“Sir, if you’re not going to order anything from the menu—”

“ _I’ll have the butternut squash soup to start, along with a loaf of the rosemary bread, please,_ ” Bilbo cuts in then – in perfect Sindarin, if he does say so himself. The elf turns shocked eyes on him and he adds, looking across at Thorin, “ _And a bottle of the mulled red wine, don’t you think, dearest?_ ”

His dwarf smiles at him, closing the menu and holding it out dismissively towards the waiter. “That sounds wonderful, amrâlimê,” he says, and then switches smoothly into Sindarin as well, his deep voice adding a lovely note of thunder to the otherwise delicate tongue, “ _I’ll have the same, as well as the twenty-eight ounce porterhouse steak, rare._ ”

The elf takes their menus, his mouth puckered up unhappily, and mutters something that might be, “I’ll have that out shortly,” before sweeping away again.

“They’re going to spit in our food,” Bilbo sighs, shaking his head as he watches the waiter march away, though he can’t seem to keep the smile off his face.

Thorin grunts. “Might improve the flavor, who knows.”

“Oh, shut it, you,” Bilbo responds, all out grinning as he turns back towards his husband. Thorin returns his smile, looking far too pleased with himself, and Bilbo simply cannot help himself any longer: he surges up out of his seat and rounds the table in two quick steps, sinking his fingers into Thorin’s beard and catching the dwarf in a deep kiss, not caring anymore who might be watching or what anyone in this sodding restaurant thinks of them.

Thorin looks gratifyingly dazed when they break apart a few moments later. “What was that for?” he asks, one of his hands coming up to cover Bilbo’s against his cheek.

“Oh, you know,” Bilbo smiles down at him, bumping their foreheads lightly together, “just for being you.”

Thorin’s expression softens once more, and he rests his forehead against Bilbo’s, his hand warm against the back of Bilbo’s neck and his gaze gentle. “Happy anniversary, my love,” he murmurs.

Bilbo feels his grin widening once more, and tips his face down in search of another kiss. “Happy anniversary.”

**Author's Note:**

> -Thorin & Bilbo met in a Sindarin class in university, at first because Thorin needed some foreign language for his international business major, and then because he wanted to talk to the cute hobbit but was too shy to just ask him out :3 Since Thorin grew up bilingual (Westron & Khuzdul) and Bilbo has had a passion for languages since he was a kid, they both pick up additional languages with relative ease & now have quite the multilingual household :D
> 
> -I really don't know anything about elvish languages, so I may have exaggerated the differences between Sindarin and Quenya, but for the purposes of this fic I'm figuring they're like Arabic & Farsi: almost the same alphabet, a little vocabulary crossover, but ultimately really really really different languages. Hopefully this wasn't too offensively off the mark for any elven nerds out there ;)
> 
> -Translations:  
> Amrâlimê – Love of mine (Khuzdul)  
> Mara sinyë – Good evening (Quenya)  
> Avestar – My made-up word for ‘hors d’oeuvres’, since they obviously don’t have French in Middle Earth, ha! From ‘avesta’ (Quenya), literally ‘beginning.’ I couldn’t find any guidance on how to make this plural, but this seemed to be the pattern for other words ending in -a, so… If anyone knows more about elven languages, I’m all ears!  
> Gabshunê – My treasure (Khuzdul)  
> Barzunê – My sun/gold (Khuzdul)
> 
> Khuzdul via the Dwarrow Scholar’s Neo-Khuzdul Dictionary. Quenya via elfdict.com.
> 
> Come find me [on tumblr](http://jezunya.tumblr.com/)!


End file.
